The Daily Texture for 02/10/2015
Spring Treasure
Spring is right around the corner, and here's a lovely texture to start off the season with, featuring glorious lime green, a touch of lavender and golden yellow. I used this texture for the composite image "Chasing Lilacs", featuring some lovely lilac flowers my neighbor grows and one of our sweet hummingbirds. I placed the flower image on top of the texture and set it to hard light, enabling it to pick up the colors from the texture underneath. Placing a duplicate of the original texture on top, I masked it away from the main part of the flowers. Then I decided to add the bird, so I placed her on top of the flower layer, and masked away her background. I gave her a little gold reflector light {Topaz Lens Effects} to warm up her tone a bit and give her a yellow glow so she would blend better with the texture. I masked that top texture layer off of her as well.
TIP: When working with hummingbirds, pay attention to their background colors before pairing them with a texture. Hummingbirds have very transparent wings. {more so than other bird species} While they may look white or gray, they actually pick up the colors behind their wings as they fly. In the top hummingbird photo below, you can see the background green is picked up by the wing on the right, and in the darker hummingbird photo below that, the wing has picked up the dark background color. When choosing a hummingbird to use with this texture, I chose the top one, as the colors picked up by the wing more closely match the texture I was using. This helps things blend better and faster. If I would have chosen the bird with the darker background, she would have looked too harsh in the image I was working on with the lilacs and this pastel spring texture, and even though I could have made adjustments to change her color tone of her wings, it would have taken much longer to fix.
TIP: When working with hummingbirds, pay attention to their background colors before pairing them with a texture. Hummingbirds have very transparent wings. {more so than other bird species} While they may look white or gray, they actually pick up the colors behind their wings as they fly. In the top hummingbird photo below, you can see the background green is picked up by the wing on the right, and in the darker hummingbird photo below that, the wing has picked up the dark background color. When choosing a hummingbird to use with this texture, I chose the top one, as the colors picked up by the wing more closely match the texture I was using. This helps things blend better and faster. If I would have chosen the bird with the darker background, she would have looked too harsh in the image I was working on with the lilacs and this pastel spring texture, and even though I could have made adjustments to change her color tone of her wings, it would have taken much longer to fix.
Like this texture? Buy it here for only $2. Commercial Use OK.
Free Hummingbird Photo!
Here's a free gift for my visitors! You may use this delightful hummingbird in flight photo {click on it for full size version} to combine with a texture, or better yet, composite with one of your flower images to create your own hummingbird art. Have fun, and be sure to share what you've done on The Daily Texture Facebook Page!